“You are just a rib.” I still hate that some three decades ago those words dripped off my lips. I said them jokingly, but it was a joke also designed to demean. It belittled a fellow member of my high school youth group, and all women.
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Let’s Talk About Sex … and Gender
I am going to guess that when you read the title, the word sex jumped off the page. Perhaps there was even a moment of titillation and excitement. After all, you are human and for most of us, sex is fun.
Or maybe you had a different response tied to the same physical act. Perhaps for you, sex is predominantly a tool of manipulation or an act of violence. Then again, it could be something you biologically yearn for but for any number of reasons, it is denied. Sex can bring up deep feelings of shame or confusion. For any of these readers, sex is anything but titillating and fun.
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God Is Not In Control
God is not in control. I don’t care how many times Twila Paris repeats the chorus of her 1993 song making that declaration. It does not matter how many pastors declare it from the pulpit. Nor does it matter how many times well-meaning Christians pronounce it in an attempt to comfort those who are going through hard times. If God were in control, then there would be no need for Jesus to teach us to pray, “Thy Kingdom come,” because God’s rule and reign would already be here.
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Stop Objectifying God
Last fall I officiated a funeral for a five-week-old. Matty was a happy, chubby, giggly, and healthy boy who never woke up from a nap. The only medical explanation offered was SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which the Mayo Clinic describes as “the unexplained death, usually during sleep, of a seemingly healthy baby less than a year old.”
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What Haunts You Can Heal You
When read as a primal story, Genesis 1 reveals the story of God healing the world, our communities, and our individual lives. But it doesn’t necessarily happen in the way we expect because Western society offers a vision of healing that rarely invites us live beyond verse 2. Moreover, because broken Christianity largely integrates itself with Western culture, it too is complicit in our creative stagnation. Let me explain.
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Nothing Is Evil and Nothing Is Evil
Nothing is evil. How do you read those words? Do you hear me saying that there is no such thing as evil? Or maybe you read them as the absence of something, the void, is evil? Either way, when you read Genesis 1 as a primal story, as a cosmological myth, you are right.
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